The High Impact Athletes Podcast

Marcus chats with viral Olympic athlete and back-to-back gold medalist Michaela Blyde of the NZ Sevens. They dive into the pressures and nerves of playing for your country, the culture and psychology of champions, meeting a childhood hero in Shelley-Ann Fraser-Pryce and more. Michaela is a firecracker of a human - unfiltered, hilarious, and world-class in her sport. You don’t want to miss this one!

Marcus chats with 2024 Olympic high jump champion Hamish Kerr, who is also a World Indoor Championships gold and bronze medalist, Commonwealth Games gold medalist, Oceania and New Zealand record holder, newly crowned memelord, and is otherwise known as the Flying Kiwi.

Topics include what it feels like to win gold in a stadium of 80,000 people, the rarity and challenges of a gold medal jump-off, the emotional toll of the Olympics, and the harsh realities of making a living as a track & field athlete.

Marcus chats with Liv Boeree, one of the most successful female poker players of all time. Liv is the only woman to have won both a European Poker Tour event and a World Series of Poker bracelet, and has amassed tournament winnings of over $3.5m dollars over her career. They talk about what makes a world-class poker player, whether poker skills are born of nature or nurture, and the experience of being a woman in a majority male-dominated game and how to exploit that fact. 

Liv was a cofounder of Raising for Effective Giving, which educated poker players about the ideas of giving effectively and managed to raise over $14m for top charities over its lifetime. This idea of creating win-win scenarios is a persistent theme in Liv’s life, so much so that she is now hosting her own podcast called Win-Win with Liv Boeree, and has given two TED talks on the main stage, the latest of which is specifically focused on the win-win mindset and its potential to counteract Moloch traps and races to the bottom. 

Follow Liv on:
Youtube at: https://www.youtube.com/@LivBoeree

Twitter/X at: https://twitter.com/Liv_Boeree
Instagram at: https://www.instagram.com/liv_boeree/ 

Marcus chats with David Nyika, one of New Zealand’s most successful boxers. Olympic bronze medalist, Commonwealth Games double gold medalist, undefeated as a professional: Dave is a shining talent in the ring and he’s just getting started. He also has a huge heart and is known as ‘The Nice Guy’. We get into all things boxing as well as a variety of topics outside the ring, including his Ugandan heritage, his love for animals, and ‘Dave Logic’. 

Follow Dave on:

Instagram at: https://www.instagram.com/davidnyika/
Tiktok at: https://www.tiktok.com/@davidnyika1

Fernando is a veteran ballet dancer, having spent years at Houston Ballet after graduating from the Royal Ballet School in London. Fernando dives into the pressures and social difficulties of being a male ballet dancer as an adolescent, the struggles of constant rejection, and the power of fully expressing your feelings through dance. 

Fernando has a profound and pragmatic approach to the food he eats and the way he thinks about consumption, which has led to some rethinking of my own eating habits. 

Outside of dance, Fernando has been charitable for many years. He has taken the 10% Giving What We Can Pledge, was one of the only HIA athletes who discovered effective giving before HIA existed, and has started a sister organization called Artists of Impact, designed to be the HIA for actors, musicians, dancers, writers, all types of artists who want to use their resources to do maximum good in the world. 

Follow Fernando: @fernandomartingullans on Instagram

“The quickest way to become a millionaire in racing is to start out as a billionaire.”

Ellis Spiezia is known as the electric renegade and is the first native electric racing driver. He, along with his parents Michelle and Francesco, comprise the Ellysium Racing Team.

Marcus chats with the team about the pros and cons of electric vs combustion racing, the financial and lifestyle realities of getting to the top of the racing world, the fears of a parent watching their child crash at high speed, and the lowdown on working and travelling together full-time as a family. 

Off the track Ellysium is pioneering a new way of developing a brand in sport. They are leaning into the metaverse and blockchain technology, having created their own virtual fan space. They also donate to animal welfare and climate change organisations through HIA, and aim to increase these donations as they move up the world rankings. 

Check out their beautiful website at https://www.ellysium.co/

Follow them on Instagram: @ellysium_racing

Julia is an Olympian and triple Commonwealth Games Medalist hammerthrower, winning one gold and two silvers across 12 years. She has snared six national titles and set 8 national records in New Zealand. Julia is also a weapon in the classroom, having been Head Girl and Dux at high school and graduating in economics from Princeton, where she became Princeton’s first female track & field athlete to win an NCAA title. Alongside her throwing career Julia has worked for the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, and now works at SuperFund. 

Marcus and Julia dive into the mental side of sport and the importance of staying true to your values whilst competing, dealing with adversity around big events and how Julia bounced back from being quarantined with covid to winning a Comm Games medal, the importance of family in an athlete’s life, and what it’s like having your father as your coach. 
Off the field we talk about what compels Julia about effective giving and why she reached out to get involved with HIA, the issues she’s most concerned about in the world today, type 2 fun, and much more.

You can follow Julia on instagram at @jtotherat 

Jamie Farndale is an athlete scholar. He was captain of the Scotland Rugby 7s team, which made history in beating New Zealand (the first Scottish team in any version of rugby to do so) and in winning a world series. He is also studying business sustainability at Cambridge University alongside his pro athlete career. 

Jamie chats with Marcus and Hugo about his atypical pathway to becoming a professional rugby player, along with all the special moments in his career. We dive into the pros and cons of collating British nations into the GB team, leadership responsibilities within the squad, and the highs and lows of sport and how to handle them.

Off the field, Jamie talks about growing up in nature and exploring the Scottish highlands, the studies he’s pursued alongside a professional sporting career, how he sees businesses being run in an ideal world, why so few athletes speak up about what they believe in, and much more.

Follow Jamie on Instagram and Twitter @farndalej

Erin and Dylan talk about Erin’s dual citizenship and how that came about, why she chose to represent NZ and her pathway to pro tennis with all of its lumps and bumps, and the factor that allowed her to move from an also-ran to a top 30 tennis player. Off the court, Erin talks about who taught her to be charitable, her experience of pledging a percentage of her income, the organisations she chooses to support and why, and the flaws and flourishes of humanity.

Marcus chats with Ryan Fox, PGA and DP World Tour golfer and winner of the Dunhill Links Championships and Ras Al Kaimah Classic in 2022. They dive into the compelling nature of golf, what makes it so hard, and why people keep coming back. Golf is mentally excruciating, and Foxy shares some of the methods he uses to keep his mindset on track. Foxy comes from an insanely impressive line of world-beating athletes, with NZ legends as both father and grandfather. He is adding to the legacy, footing it with the best golfers in the world on the biggest stages in the world. 

Foxy has been with HIA since near the beginning and has a grounded and generous way about him. He’s passionate about the environment. This shows in the way he speaks and the actions he takes to protect it, which is covered in depth in the podcast. 

This was a wide-ranging conversation, from musings on the GOAT of tennis to dredging up obscure Matrix quotes.

To follow Foxy’s progress, find him at @ryanfoxgolfer on instagram or twitter.